1500 Van Ness
Port Townsend, WA 98368
360.379.4520
English 11 American Literature
Course Outline/Syllabus 2007-08
Mrs. Jennifer Nielsen
379-4500 ext. 4477
Course Description: While preparing students for lifelong learning beyond high school, this course emphasizes literature analysis as well as analytical and persuasive writing. Assignments include a directed narrative, and persuasive and expository essays on literary and non-literary topics. Art, music, film, current events and research will be integrated to support the reading and writing in the course.
Course Objectives: Through the process of reading and writing, students will become skilled in composing for different audiences and purposes. Students will learn to understand and appreciate the diverse ways authors make meaning in both oral and written texts. Students will identify literary structures and conventions and effectively use them in their own writing. They will identify, evaluate, and discuss the choices they have made in the composition process and increase their revision skills. Students, while being exposed to a broad range of fiction and non-fiction on various topics and in various formats, will improve their reading comprehension and analysis skills.
Class Structure/Methods of Instruction: This course relies heavily upon outside reading. Students will be expected to keep up with the reading schedule for each piece of literature studied and there will be quizzes to check comprehension. Discussion is the primary way in which students come to understand a particular work of fiction or non-fiction. Discussions will involve both small and large groups, and some will be student-led. Writing groups will be utilized to allow a time and a place for feedback on rough drafts of essays. Teacher response to essays will provide further feedback. Students will be allowed to rewrite all out-of-class essays for improved credit. Cooperative learning groups will also be used for various purposes, but most assignments will be individually completed and evaluated.
Assessment:
Assessment is done primarily through essays. Some quizzes will be given covering key concepts and vocabulary. Students will be expected to participate in class discussions. Reader response journals and writing logs will be evaluated quarterly in student/teacher conferences. Assignments are due on the due date given in class. Excuses for not completing assigned reading and writing on time will not be accepted unless it involves a death in the family or an illness, which requires hospitalization.
Late assignments will earn, at best, 60% credit.
Attendance:
Consistent attendance is extremely important in English 11 because much of the class grade is based upon participation in class discussions and activities. The students' grades may be affected pursuant to the guidelines outlined in the PTHS attendance policy.
PTHS Attendance and Participation for Credit Policy
Regular and daily participation are requirements for this class. In order for you to make the most of your experience in AP English Literature and Composition, the expectation is that you will be here each day with a willingness to take part in classroom activities and to learn.
In this class, the Port Townsend High School Attendance Policy will be adhered to. Students who have accumulated 12 absences (for non school-related activities) during this/either semester will not earn credit for course completion. Parent notification will occur when a student has reached their 6thand 10th absence.
When a student accumulates their 12th absence in this class, they and their parent /guardian will be notified that there has been a loss of credit. The student will have the right to appeal their loss of credit. This appeal must be scheduled with the Attendance Appeals Committee within two school days. Students will be required to account for their absences to a committee comprised of their teacher, a guidance counselor and an administrator. The Attendance Appeals Committee will inform the student and their parent/guardian of their decision within two school days.
Regular attendance and participation in this class is your responsibility!
Semester One
18 weeks
Independent Novel Project – First Semester (Due January 20, 2008)
All students will choose a book for the list provided at the end of this syllabus, read it and prepare a paper, visual and presentation. This will be the 1st semester final. You will have the entire first semester to prepare this project.
Film as Literature Unit (4 weeks)
Goal: Students will be able to identify the cinematic techniques, which advance or contribute to the story of various films and compare those to literary techniques employed by writers of fiction.
Sources: Reading in the Dark: Using Film as a Tool in the English Classroom
by John Golden
Clips from various classic films including scenes from Rear Window, North by Northwest, Citizen Cane, Vertigo, The Color Purple, Do the Right Thing, and many more.
Writing: Analytical Film Review
Rhetoric and Composition Unit (4 weeks)
Establish:
Vocabulary Study
Reader Response Journals
Writing Groups
Analysis of current controversy: Topic chosen through class discussion.
Writing: Developing an Argument
Personal Essay for College/Scholarship (2 weeks)
The personal essay may take one of the three forms: personal essay, personal reminiscence and essay of experience.
-Students will explore ideas about themselves through class discussion and individual teacher conferences to determine topics for writing.
-Students will explore colleges of interest and their entrance essay topics.
-Through direct instruction the students will work with personal writing strategies including anecdote, dialogue, details, language, syntax and varied structures.
-Students will work with conventions, voice, and developing an appropriate tone through peer editing, revising and blind readings of example essays.
Family Unit (4 weeks)
Guiding question: "Is there such a thing as the perfect family?"
Primary Works:
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (in class)
Our Town by Thornton Wilder (in class)
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Secondary Works:
"Notes of a Native Son" by James Baldwin
"The Blue Dress" by Sharon Olds
"No Name Woman" by Maxine Hong Kingston
"The Perfect Family" by Alice Hoffman
Rereading America (Chapter 2) "Harmony at Home"
DVD: Classic Family TV: The Dick VanDyke Show, Father’s Knows Best, The Andy Griffith Show and more.
Semester Two
18 weeks
Prejudice/Alienation Unit (4 weeks)
Guiding question: "How does one define himself/herself in a society that
does not recognize him/her as equal?"
Primary Works:
Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Secondary Works:
"What is Perfect Anyway? Simply Being Beautiful?" by Terry McMillan
"Revising our Prejudices: The Holocaust and the Freedom of Speech"
by F. Tremblay
"Graduation" by Maya Angelou
Film: Crash
Persuasive Essay: Using the works studied in this unit the students will write an essay addressing the guiding question above.
War Unit (6 weeks)
Guiding question: "How do people cope with the after-effects of war?"
Primary Works:
Night by Elie Wiesel
Hiroshima by John Hershey ( in class)
The Things they Carried by Tim O'Brien
Secondary Works:
"Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki, Told by Flight Member" by William Laurence
"Denying the Holocaust" by Deborah Lipstadt
Films: Apocalypse Now
Fat Man, Little Boy
Into the Arms of Strangers
Assignments: Documented Research Paper with interview (MLA format)
American Authors and Poets (5 weeks)
Primary Work: American Literature Anthology…many selections including…
- "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost (poem)
- "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor
- "Equal Time for Nonsense" by Lawrence Krauss
- "Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night" by Dylan Thomas (poem)
- "Rite of Passage" by Sharon Olds (poem)
- "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Walt Whitman (poem)
- "Sex, Lies and Advertising" by Gloria Steinem
- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address
- "The Library Card" by Richard Wright
Assignments:
Research/ Oral Presentation on American author
Preparation for Senior Project: Writing a Proposal (2 weeks)
Students will work with English and social studies teachers to write a proposal for their senior project.
Suggested Readings List:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neil (play)
Warrior Woman by Maxine Hong Kingston
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (play)
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Sula or Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
There Are no Children Here by Alan Kotlowitz
Native Son orBlack Boy by Richard Wright
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Alexie Sherman
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Black Elk Speaks by John Neihardt,
Stones From the River by Ursela Hegi
Fools Crow by James Welch
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris
Tracks or Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
Enola Gay by Thomas and Witts
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
Bless me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Winesbury Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
You Can’t Go Home Again by Thomas Woolfe